Get ready for Culture Night with handy app for Android and iOS

Culture Night 2013 arrives on Friday, 20 September, and cultural institutions, landmarks, tourist attractions and heritage sites across Ireland will open up for free to the public for a night of unadulterated culture. To help plan your evening of cultural delights, the Temple Bar Cultural Trust has developed an app for Android and iOS smartphones.

The Culture Night 2013 app will help users get the most out of the yearly celebration. The entire programme of events taking place across the whole island of Ireland, as well as cities in the UK, is stored here, with details of what’s happening in each venue.

Users can also call the venue, visit its website or get directions directly from the app.

Those attending Culture Night events in Dublin have an added bonus of creating their own Culture Night trail using the app. Users simply select the events they would like to attend and these will be saved under ‘My Trail’, where they can be viewed alphabetically by venue or on a map.

‘Near Me’ will use location data to call up all events happening nearby and list them by the closest to the farthest. Users can also browse events by map, with colour-coded pins denoting the different districts in Dublin city centre.

In ‘Share’, users open up a crowd-sourced gallery of Culture Night photos and, if they add their own, they could be in with the chance of winning €100 for the best picture.

There are also quick links to view Culture Night’s official Facebook and Twitter feeds, so users can keep abreast of updates on the night.

The app can be downloaded for free from Google Play and the iTunes App Store. Having tested both, it has to be said that the iOS version is far superior with faster load times, more share options, animated menus and more information on additional events happening throughout the night.